Prominent Democrats Keep Destroying Norms To Go After Trump

Prominent Democrats have repeatedly abandoned political norms and customs in order to oppose President Donald Trump.

Trump’s presidency, and his candidacy before it, has been in large part defined by his willingness to abandon conventional political behavior when it suits him — a recurring feature in criticisms of the president. Many of his opponents, too, have trampled American political norms, even as they rush to “resist” Trump.

Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters exemplified that tendency on Saturday when she called for liberal mobs to harass Trump administration officials who show their faces in public — a move that earned her a rare rebuke from Democratic leadership.

Waters isn’t alone in abandoning political norms to go after Trump.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, slammed Trump during the campaign for refusing to promise to accept the results of the election. Clinton called Trump’s defiance “horrifying” and said he was “talking down our democracy.”

Six House Democrats formally introduced articles of impeachment in December and another 52 joined them in voting to impeach Trump. Sixty-six House Democrats supported the motion a second time around in January.

Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker broke precedent in January 2017 by testifying against Jeff Sessions’ nomination for attorney general.

Former President Barack Obama similarly chose attacking Trump over following political tradition.

When Obama left office, the existing standard was for presidents to refrain from publicly criticizing their successor.

That standard lasted just 10 days in the Trump era, when Obama publicly rebuked Trump over his travel ban affecting immigration from seven terror-prone, Muslim-majority nations. (The Supreme Court upheld a narrower version of that ban on Tuesday.)

Since then, Obama and his wife have slammed Trump more than a dozen times since leaving the White House.

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